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strange that you would consider half life 2 for space sim mods when freespace 2 is sitting right there all open source and pretty.

ES is probably my favourite mod for HL2. It's absolutely fantastic, the game idea is kind of like the space battles in Battlefront 2, each team has a main ship and a couple of frigates to defend, so you fight it out in the middle to destroy the frigates. Then you board the enemy ship and then it turns into an infantry combat game, capturing the main points.

Shame the game is pretty much dead, I would pay good money for a game like it.

Mod-wise, HL2 actually ended up being pretty weak. It was the tail end of the "Let's just mod the crap out of every game" craze. And most of the really good ones have actually become standalone games.

Pretty much this.

HL2 marked the point when the expected quality of art assets went through the roof, and a lot of mod teams couldn't really match it. It's easier to work on MP mods because there's no requirement for digital acting or anything like that, so a lot of them are multiplayer mods. Mapping and modding declined with the HL2/D3 era unfortunately. Also the pipeline was (still is) atrocious.

That said Missing Information is great for a look at what HL2 might have been but last I saw the public release hadn't been updated for ages. Minerva as suggested by gundato definitely wasn't bad either. Some of the MP mods were good but I don't know if they still get regular playtime compared to the juggernauts like TF2. A lot of the more successful ones from the HL era went on to have commercial releases (like NS2).

If you like singleplayer mods I would recommend Mission Improbable. It's short but very well made and if I remember correctly it was created by 2 employees from DICE in their own time. High quality and with many custom textures and objects. Feels like an outtake from the original campaign.

strange that you would consider half life 2 for space sim mods when freespace 2 is sitting right there all open source and pretty.

that's a good point. and i do have Freespace 2. i guess i just want to try out any kind of space game i can get my hands on, no matter the source(that was not a pun).

Originally Posted by BobbyFizz

ES is probably my favourite mod for HL2. It's absolutely fantastic, the game idea is kind of like the space battles in Battlefront 2, each team has a main ship and a couple of frigates to defend, so you fight it out in the middle to destroy the frigates. Then you board the enemy ship and then it turns into an infantry combat game, capturing the main points.

Shame the game is pretty much dead, I would pay good money for a game like it.

Dystopia I'll echo. Played a fair bit of it back in the day. NeoTokyo might have had the style (Dys does have its own style), but it had nothing compared to Dystopia's substance. Tight team and objective based gameplay, 3 classes, 4 (main) weapons for each, oodles of implants and all the customisability that comes with that, loads of maps, meaningful Cyberspace play, polished, great UI and interface in general... from things like the hitbeeps, the map/radar, how the implants worked. Brilliant game, and a real shame they didn't get snapped up by Valve for a commercial project.

Although, the Dys Dev Team became Puny Human Games, who are currently working on Blade Symphony (JK2 inspired sword fighting/duelling game), which was one of the first vidya game Kickstarters, about 12 months before the whole Kickstarter craze took off. They succeeded and picked up a Source licence, I think. I also heard whispers that they've (re)started work on Dystopia again.

Hidden Source was also pretty good fun. The RPS Steam Chat peoples have been known to get together for a game of it, occasionally.

Originally Posted by Hypernetic

I just have an opinion different to your own. Circle jerking is good for no one, be glad somebody isn't afraid to disagree with women on the internet.

Can Neotokyo or any of these mods be played without having HL2? For example if you have L2D 1 or 2 or one of the SDKs?

NEOTOKYO only requires the SDK base (try 2007 first). If the mod only requires an SDK base then you don't need to own any Valve game. The SDKs are nominally free.

Not sure about other mods mentioned here off the top of my head. Generally speaking, you can install a Source mod, launch it and Steam will attempt to download additional files if needed (so if the mod requires props, textures or models from HL2:EP2 it will download those so long as you own it).

No more room in hell is fairly good, assuming that you can get it to work. Desura has a pretty good collection of HL2 mods in general, as does Steam. I agree that The Hidden is awesome. If you`re not sure about it you can watch Kilplix`s series on it. Sure, he`s a boring YT screamer most of the time but at least the videos demonstrate how the game works.